The Rhoanians
by Obessed with tv shows
Summary: The story of Kunik of the aurochs cave, a young girl who loses her mother at a young age and is left to be raised by her father; leader of the aurochs cave. His leadership spirals downwards into a twisted, corrupt rule. Original story, OC. Don't have to have read EC to understand. Doesn't involve Ayla, Jondalar, etc. Set in the fertile crescent, in what is later Palestine.
Chapter 1

Author's note: I'm starting an Earth's Children fanfic that is more of an individual story. It has nothing to do with Ayla or Jondalar or any of the other peoples we met in the original books by Jean M. Auel. These are meant to be a spin off that I came up with myself. You don't have to have read the original series to understand this book. This is an OC/OC story, although that won't occur until the second book. If you were hoping to see a continuation of Earth's Children then I'm sorry, return to the fanfic listing if you're not interested. If you don't care about who's it about and love Auel's original story then continue! This first book of my series, which is to be called People of the Past, is all my own writing so please don't hate on it too much or copy it. You'll see some parallels between Ayla's story and Kunik's but her story is vastly different from Ayla's.

The small, five year old child sat outside her parent's dwelling in the early morning sun. In her mind she had no reason to worry for the day ahead, she had never questioned her safety or that of her peoples' safety. Such responsibilities didn't rest on the mind of a child, instead they rested on that of her father. As a child, she idolized her father. He was the hero that all children pictured their fathers to be. He was strong and wise, leading their small cave of people sagely. She had never questioned him or his judgement.

A woman ducked beneath the door flap of the dwelling, a soft leather hide made from red deer that had been painstakingly crafted and painted with esoteric symbols. Her green eyes, that which matched her daughter's, lighted at the sight of her child playing on a mat in front of the dwelling. A smiled graced her features, so like a grown version of the girl's, as she approached.

The girl was too busy trying to string the deer vertebrate onto the soft leather thong to pay much attention to her mother's approach. The woman knelt on the woven mat as she smiled at the girl. "What are you doing, Kunik?" Kunik did not look up from her play, focused entirely on getting the vertebrate on the thong. "Geia said I couldn't make a necklace as nice as hers," she admitted her childish issues to her mother.

Her mother nodded, "That is serious indeed. We shall see who wins." The little girl's chest swelled cockily, "I will, of course." The woman laughed heartily at her daughter's antics, shaking her head as she stood. "Be good. I'm going to go check for herds." She pressed a kiss to the child's head and strode off, disappearing from sight soon enough.

Their cave was in a prime location, a shallow valley surrounded by miles of grassland that often drew herds of wild horses and a variety of ungulates. Beyond that were forests where a variety of fauna roamed. There were your usual small creatures; moles, voles, mice, rats, pikas, giant hamsters, weasels, ermines, minks, martins, fishers, rabbits, hares, and the large wolverine who was more a predator than the other members of its family.

There were a variety of hoofed mammals; fallow deer, white tail deer, roe deer, mule deer, reindeer, red deer; known as elk to those who called the elk a moose. There were elk, or moose depending where you went. Rounding out the deer family were the huge megaceros whose antlers could span three meters tip to tip. Their huge palmate antlers took a good deal of muscle mass and they were one of the hardest deer to hunt in the valley.

Alongside the deer were huge bison and aurochs, wild cattle that roamed the lands in search of foliage with their large herds in tow. The last of the plains mammals were the wild horses and their cousins. The horses traveled in medium sized harems with a stallion as their leader. Their cousins the wild asses and the onagers, a mixture of the two, traveled similarly. Farther to the north, mountains could be seen panning across the horizon. There chamois and big horned sheep climbed and scrambled nimbly over the rocks. In the rich valley below them saiga antelope could be found grazing on the nutrient rich grass.

Predators rounded out the food chain. There were the felines; small wild cats who would later give rise to the domestic housecats, bobcats, lynx, jaguars, leopards, cougars, snow leopards on the mountains, and the gigantic cave lion who was the twice the size of his later brethren. There were rumors of the dirk toothed tigers who were said to be rarely seen and even rarer to kill one. No one quite knew if they were real and given the rumors of the aggression they possessed, no one wanted to find out.

The canines were as plentiful as the felines. Foxes; both of the red and silver morph and some who had crossbred between the two, coyotes, wolves, the dog like dholes, and the huge cave hyenas. There were also predatory birds who scavenged the remains of kills: kites, carrion crows, hawks, vultures, etc. Black bears, grizzlies, and the huge vegetarian cave bears roamed the forests as well but were rarely encountered by the humans who inhabited the valley.

The largest of the mammals to roam their prehistoric, glacial home was the mammoth. At their tallest they were fifteen feet tall and at the shortest nine feet. Their tusks could grow out to a huge span of seventeen feet, it took several tons of roughage to feed the huge beasts which caused them to migrate constantly to find the sustenance they craved. They were the largest animals to roam the land at the time, and the largest of those that came afterwards.

Above all of them, on top of the food chain, was the human. Whether they be Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon they hunted the huge animals. Yet, they were the weakest of all the predators. They had no sudden burst of speed as the lion did that would allow them to chase down prey, no fangs, no claws, no venom, no protection against their competitors. The only thing that enabled them to hunt the mega fauna of their home was their brain, that which allowed them to create elaborate traps and ways to hunt their prey.

Flora was as plentiful as fauna. Gathering parties of foragers often trekked to the forest in the early spring and through the summer to gather edible foods in huge quantities. The valley was their home and it was bountiful.

Kunik barely looked up as her father left the tent, not saying a word to his daughter as he passed. He followed off in the direction that his mate had gone, an angry expression in his face. Kunik was too young to recognize his expression nor the grim ambiance in the air. She continued to play, assured in her safety and that life would always carry on this way. Her small world was shattered by the scream that echoed through the camp, followed by a sickening thud and the wailing sobs of her father.

Fear gripped the tiny girl as she toddled to her feet and rushed for the entrance to their cave. No one noticed the child as they all hurried to rush towards the noise. Kunik shoved her way through the legs of her people, stopping abruptly at the front of the gathered crowd.

There on the ground lay her mother's body. She was crumpled grotesquely as blood seeped from the crack in her skull, pink fluid flooding from her orifices. It appeared she had slipped and that she had died instantly upon hitting the ground. Kunik wasn't aware of that particular fact, being too young to know that her mother was already dead.

She rushed forward on short, chubby legs to her mother, causing gasps to ring up into the air of the mourning cave. She fell to her knees by her dead mother, blood soaking the soft deerskin skirt that pooled beneath her. "Mama? Mama, you have to wake up," she pleaded plaintively. The women of the cave had tears running down their face as they pulled their children away from the heart wrenching scene. The men were not dry eyed either, watching sorrowfully as they casted glances at their leader. They were waiting for guidance, waiting for him to get down the rock his mate had slipped to her death from.

Kunik paid it no mind, resorting to shaking her mother forcefully as sobs came from her throat. "Mama, wake up!" She crumpled against her mother's chest, burying her head in the already cooling curve of her neck. The crowd parted to let one woman through, a friend to the dead woman whose daughter was clinging to her. She lay a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder, who glanced up at her with tear stained eyes. "Come, child. She's not here anymore, she's with Rhoa."

The girl glanced down at her mother once more, it was not her mother anymore. It was the cold shell her mother had inhabited at one time. Her spirit, her life force, was gone. No air passed on her lungs nor did her heart beat. The blood soaked girl nodded, snatching the leather thong from around her mother's neck and pressing the one she had been working on into the corpse's hand. Clutching her mother's necklace, she turned to Rhoan, the healer of her cave, and allowed herself to be led away from her mother.


End file.
